60 quotes found
Novelist · Welsh · 1966
Welsh novelist (born 1966)
“It's a curious, wanting thing.”
“Marriages are like pianos. They go in and out of tune.”
“Undressing myself had no fun in it, now I had undressed her.”
“She said, 'It is filled with all the words for how I want you.”
“I felt that thread that had come between us, tugging, tugging at my heartso hard, it hurt me.”
“One time, two years ago, I took a draught of morphia, meaning to end my life. My mother found me before the life was ended, the doctor drew the poison from my stomach with a syringe, and when I wok...”
“But, here was a curious thing. The more I tried to give up thinking of her, the more I said to myself, 'She's nothing to you', the harder I tried to pluck the idea of her out of my heart, the more ...”
“She scissored the curls away, and - toms, grow easily sentimental over their haircuts, but I remember this sensation very vividly - it was not like she was cutting hair, it was as if I had a pair o...”
“Why do gentlemen's voices carry so clearly, when women's are so easily stifled?”
“Don't you be thinking,' she says, 'on things that are done and can't be changed. All right, dear girl? You think of the time to come.”
“It is a world that is made of love. Did you think there is only the kind of love your sister has for her husband? Did you think there must be here, a man with whiskers, and over here, a lady in a g...”
“For she was the only one, of all of them, to have spared me a pleasant word; and suddenly I longed for time to pass, not for its own sake, but as it would take me back to her.”
“She wished for a moment that they were all children again. It still seemed extraordinary to her, that everything had turned out the way it had.”
“The day had begun to feel tinny: a pretend day, a dream day, that for some unaccountable reason she had to go on and on with as if it were real.”
“Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick successio...”
“She said that that was the disadvantage of bringing creatures into the house: one grew used to them, and then, one had the upset of their loss.”
“And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.”
“She closed her eyes and let the rain fall on her face, and after another second, I could not have said what were raindrops, and what tears.”
“They might be kind, I thought. They might be sensible and good. They will not be like you. But I did not say it. I knew it would mean nothing to her. I said something - something ordinary and mild...”
“It made me giddy. It made me blush, worse than before. It was like liquor. It made me drunk. I drew away. When her breath came now upon my mouth, it came very cold. My mouth was wet, from hers. I s...”
“She raised her head when she heard my step, and her gaze met my own, over the matron's dipping shoulder, and her eyes grew bright. I knew then how hard it had been to keep, not just from Millbank b...”
“With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk.”
